Expanding Existing T4 – Empire v. Chaos

Today I begin my last thread of how to expand the PvP experience in T4. There is one opinion that might as well be declared fact and inscribed in stone and that is – People want to fight and kill other players in new places. WAR has been out for going on 2 and a half years and we still are contained in the same 9 T4 zones + 2 cities. We did get LotD about a year into launch, but the zone had no RvR elements in it, in fact it locked out one realm at any given time so fighting there cannot be sustained. There are several approaches to expanding this arena into a larger field which I have approached –

Adding a new racial pairing and by default three more T4 zones

Add the missing capital cities (I incorporated them as high end PvE instances, but they could always be done as PvP)

Expand existing T4 RvR lakes into the PvE lakes

Naturally adding a whole other pairing is the hardest task. Adding the remaining cities would be a difficult task depending on the state they were left at when they were pulled out. Expanding the RvR lakes would be seemingly the easiest of the options. But there is one more solution which is probably at a scale of difficulty between the cities and expanding the RvR lakes in existing maps, and that is to expand the T4 Campaign.

What do I mean by expanding the T4 Campaign? Well simply put, the campaign is a struggle over three zones (use to be 5 with forts) and with 1.4 this struggle was greatly accelerated. While domination timers did drag out the campaign, the current system makes the T4 experience seem small again. Even with forts, the gear players wear and the size of attacking and defending forces tends to give victory to the larger realm. The proposal is to add two more maps to the existing T4 campaign. These maps would most likely be devoid of PvE or have very little of it, but would instead act to elongate the T4 campaign. Yes, I know people would whine that the city became oh so more distant now, BUT consider the implications. The T4 campaign is slowed down by two additional zones; if/when forts are reintroduced the T4 campaign is further slowed down; if the campaign across 3 pairings is sufficiently slowed, there is little reason to not introduce the remaining cities because flipping two cities at once would be a rather challenging task and naturally mechanics could be introduced to simply not allow this.

The solution for the Empire v. Chaos pairing –

My first map (A) follows my gut geographical instinct and is the least likely solution. It has always bugged the heck out of me that Talabecland is between Reikland and Praag, High Pass is in between Praag and the Chaos Wastes. Why did Mythic smash T3 in between T4? The solution would be to incorporate these into T4 and construct a new T3 – this however would give Mythic the dual task of relocating the chapters/PQs from T3 to new zones which would have to be constructed. So I seek an easier solution…

My second map (B) creates two new zones which slightly wrap the campaign around T3 to avoid more criss-crossing. T3 is left intact but T4 is pushed farther east to the weaker provinces of the Empire.

The first light blue dot directly east of Riekland is located at Mordheim. This map could tie in many factors that I find interesting – a dense urban environment devastated by natural and super-natural forces, Skaven tunnels, swampy/foresty terrain. I’ve already discussed the many pros of Praag and why so many people like it, I think Mordheim can deliver the same feel in a more grim atmosphere. Also this location would work nicely with the recent Skaven Incursion element introduced with 1.4 as Mordheim is located above a giant deposit of warpstone (perhaps a permanent location for Thanquol’s?). To add to this urban and subterranean mess on the other side of the River Stir lay the ruined Vampire keep Vonholdenschlosse. The x and y coordinates of the map could be kept smaller if the subterranean elements of the skaven under-city are incorporated adding greater depth of the z-axis.

The second light blue dot along the River Talabec is Bechafen in Ostermark across from the Kislevite capital of Kislev. Again this map can incorporate dense urban environments with the two cities on opposite sides of the RvR lake with the wide Talabec river in between. One huge factor making Bechafen enticing for me is that it is a heavily wooded area and it has the sense of the isolated frontier outpost. One of my favorite RvR lakes is Troll Country-Ostland because the terrain is so heavily wooded and has a destroyed village, these natural obstacles work to create some very intense RvR fights. You get to T4 and every RvR lake is so very open with the occasional obstacles here and there. What I’d envision for this map is the feel you get in Troll Country-Ostland with dense urban centers like Praag and Wolfenburg.